Tag Archives: interior decorating

I had a nasty respiratory infection last week, so I did not get much done. But I did manage to drag myself to Ikea this last Saturday to purchase a few items. Mostly I shopped for my son’s bedroom. We bought his Malm bed. Here’s just a ew pics of what I accomplished this week.

I put together 3 Billy Bookcases in the office. Two of them are the 40 cm by 202 Cm and the one in the closet is 80 cm by 106 cm. I did manage to do a lot of organizing in the office, so I’m quite pleased. I also put the new cover on the Beddinge Lovas futon.

One of the Billy Bookcases

Liberty Belle loves the pile of pillows!

Liberty tests out the new Beddinge Lovas Cover

We did manage to put together the Malm bed and mount his lamps today (Sunday), but it was late and I did not get a picture.

I printed out a few pictures from our Berlin Trip and put them into the Nyttja frames.

Pictures from Our Berlin Trip

I put Thomas’ art print into the large Ribba frame. This was one of his B-day gifts from us. Since Thomas has taken to calling my husband “Salty” whenever he is in a bad mood, we thought this was appropriate.

Salty Tolerance

These are Ikea prints that my son absolutely loves. He bought the phone print several years ago with his own money.

Ikea Art

I’ve done a bit more around the Living Room and in the pantry as well, but since I wasn’t feeling well, I didn’t take pictures. I should have a blog posts for the Living room and office soon. Hope you all have a fantastic week!

Like this:

Saturday was a very busy day for my daughter and me. We went to the Nurnberg/Furth Ikea to pick up the majority of the items on my Ikea Project Mood boards.

Mostly Ikea Living Room

From the Living Room Mood board, I purchased two Ektorp love seats, the Hemnes TV Console, 2 narrow Billy Bookcases (and doors), and the Hemnes side table. The design has changed a little from this original mood board. and I can’t wait to show you the finished room!

Ikea Office Design

For the office I picked up the two Billy Bookcases, a new cover for the Beddinge Lovas Futon, and the remaining part of my desk.

We also picked up some legs for a dining room table and bunch of small miscellaneous items that we either needed or wanted. We also picked up dinner in the Ikea grocery section–meatballs, mashed potatoes, gravy mix, and lingonberry sauce.

This was our haul.

Ikea Shopping Trip. Does not include the Ektorp BoxesLoaded by me and my daughter.

When we got home, my husband and I assembled the Ektorp love seats. After he went to bed, my daughter and I assembled the Hemnes TV console–not easy! Sunday I worked on the bookcases and the room arrangement. It’s not perfect, but we have an odd and small space, so we made it work as best we could.

THis next picture is all of the parts for the Hemnes TV console. My daughter came up with the idea, and it made the assembly SO much easier!

Like this:

When we left Colorado, I got rid of all my office furniture—which turned out to be a blessing—because we expected to move into a small three bedroom apartment in Germany. We were lucky and received a four-bedroom apartment, so I turned the fourth bedroom—a small, dark room—into my office space and guest room.

For the past year, I made do with an old dining table set on bed risers for my huge printer and PC Tower, two cheap pressboard shelves that I put under the table, a flimsy metal and glass computer desk for the monitor and keyboard, and a DVD tower that I used as a bookcase. The closet is full of boxes and Hubby’s Army gear. The room is so dark, that I get terrible headaches while I’m studying. It drove me NUTS!

I need organization. If you’ve seen this post or this one, you know just how organized I like to be. Without an organized space to work in, I feel anxious and can’t focus. Now that I am feeling much better, I decided that it was time to fix my office–where I spend s most of my time. You can also see my obsession with Ikea in this post and this one.

I have been planning this room for the past four months. After weeks of looking at Ikea’s website and working out a reasonable budget, I came up with this design.

Ikea Office Design

Once we received our tax refund, it was time to plan my shopping trip to Ikea. I put everything that I wanted on my office wish list and printed it out to take with us. Ikea’s lists are great! You can check the available stock at your local store, and when you print it out, it gives you the exact location of the furniture items. With list in hand, we headed to Ikea in Regensburg on Saturday.

This was our haul. That large black bin in the cart was full of stuff, and there is a bulging ikea bag attached to the cart behind all of those yellow boxes.

Ikea Treasures

We had enough room in the van to go back in the store and get my Ektorp sofas for the living room (next weekend’s shopping trip), but Hubby was not thrilled about going back inside.

Hey honey, we still have room for sofas!

We got home a little later than we wanted and still had to make dinner, so we got a very late start on putting the furniture together. The ALEX drawers were not difficult to assemble, but they were time-consuming. Here’s a photolog of how our night went.

Aaaand that’s where we stopped. It was midnight and we were exhausted.

It’s midnight…we’ll finish in the morning.

I did a little more throughout the day, but I also had a lot of studying and writing to do for school. Here’s how my day went.

Sunday afternoonSunday evening

I bought the wrong light bulbs for my ARSTID wall lamps, so I had to bring in a spare table lamp. I also bought the wrong LINNMON desktop, so I will have to remedy that next weekend when we go shopping for the living room. Still to do: BILLY Bookcases and organizing. It’s going to be a long week.

Like this:

It’s been awhile since my last post. I started classes again, but didn’t realize how tough these eight week courses would be! Now I know how they pack a semester’s worth of material into short sessions–they bombard you with reading and about 12 hours of homework a week per course. Never. Ever. Again. Two courses per eight week session for this girl from now on!

Here is what I have been working on when I am avoiding school work have spare time. These are just a couple of mood boards that I worked up using Oliboard.

First up we have the general “bones” of my office space.

Ikea Office

Next up is the Ikea Living Room

Mostly Ikea Living Room

Over the next few weeks I will be posting bits and pieces of the progress and will hopefully have a full reveal in May.

Like this:

When I ask my son, “how do you want your new room to look?” his reply is, “Meh, I don’t care.”

And yet, twice now he has shown me concept rooms and artwork at Ikea that he likes. Decorating for this boy has been a challenge because he has so many interests. He loves WWII history, Science, Comics, some new weird music that I don’t get, and Formula One racing.

It doesn’t all fit together, and he seems to prefer an industrial/modern style with bright (mostly) primary colors.

So, I took his lead by creating a design using his favorite piece of art that he purchased with his own money from Ikea about 2 years ago.

From this one item (and a similar print from Ikea that he likes) I came up with this room design:

The Items

1. Inspiration Art work from Ikea. The telephone picture is no longer available, but the Solmyra (I call it Shhh) is sold at most Ikea stores.

2. Task Lighting. The rooms here are DARK! The ceiling lights do little more than cast a dull glow. My son loves to read in bed, so I will mount two of these Kvart wall lights above each night stand.

3. Malm Bed. Though the photo shows the white twin bed, it is also available in gray–which is what we will buy (eventually). Malm beds come with either a high or low headboard. We want the higher headboard so that he can lean against it comfortably.

4 and 5. Malm dresser and night stand. Ikea has several styles of dressers available in the Malm series, but my son only needs a small one.

6. Micke Desk. We love the Micke series! They are durable, yet cheap inexpensive. It’s the perfect desk for a small room. He will be getting his first computer in September, so this is a must have item.

7. Ikea PS magnet board. This is another must-have…simply because he requested it. This PS magnet board is an inexpensive way to display pictures, memos, or doodle ideas.

8. Snille desk chair. These Snille chairs are very affordable, and surprisingly comfortable. They come in several colors including basic black or white.

9. PS Vago chair. My son absolutely LOVES this Vago chair. He said that all it needs is a comfy pillow and he could sit in it for hours. I had trouble removing him from this chair on the showroom floor and felt kinda bad that I didn’t buy it immediately. Besides, doesn’t every teen boy need a “lounge” chair of his own? The chair comes in red, blue, yellow, black, and white.

Other Items

Some other items that I want to add are a picture rail, colorful frames, and the Bygel rail series.

I’d like to throw in one or two of these, but that might be pushing it a bit…